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The Early Word: Eight Years Later

President Barack Obama heads to the Situation Room on Wednesday, where he will huddle with his national security team to talk about Pakistan. They’ll all be back on Friday to talk about Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama is involved in a clamorous debate over how to move forward in a war begun exactly eight years ago today by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush administration said it aimed to find Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, destroy Al Qaeda, and remove the Taliban. Mr. Obama is exploring a range of options, from an increase in drone strikes suggested by Vice President Joseph R. Biden to a troop buildup requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Kabul.

Mr. Obama reassured Congressional leaders Tuesday that he was not considering dramatic troop cuts in Afghanistan, although he said he was undecided about General McChrystal’s request, The Times’s Peter Baker wrote. People in the meeting said Mr. Obama was chided by Senator John McCain of Arizona, his former Republican rival for the presidency, about being too “leisurely,” but the president said he felt he needed to “get this right.”

Some said that Republicans, who have come out in favor of a troop surge, and Democrats, who are split on the matter, both agreed to support whatever the president put forth, but did not specify whether that meant they would vote in favor of spending measures that would fund the president’s revised strategy.

Mr. Obama and his administration also appear to be seeking advice on how to proceed in Afghanistan from narratives of the Vietnam War. “The two books — ‘Lessons in Disaster,’ on Mr. Obama’s nightstand, and ‘A Better War’ on the shelves of military gurus — have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama’s presidency,” the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman wrote, noting that the books were out of stock in many Washington bookstores.

Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, reviewed “Lesson in Disaster” by Gordon Goldstein for The Times in 2008, praising the author for writing a book that “offers insight into how [former National Security Adviser McGeorge] Bundy, a man of surpassing skill and reputation, could have advised two presidents so badly. On the long shelf of Vietnam books, I know of nothing quite like it.” The “we won” narrative in “A Better War” by Lewis Sorley, a Vietnam War veteran, was popular in the Bush administration and enjoys support from the likes of Sen. John McCain, who has argued that Afghanistan is much less like Vietnam than Iraq.

Health Care Vitals The Senate Finance Committee is close to voting on its proposal for overhauling the nation’s health care system. The committee could vote as early as this week on the bill, after it receives an independent cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. The Times’s Robert Pear and David Herszenhorn used the frustrations of four senators on the panel to preview the challenges Democrats will have if and when the bill hits the Senate floor. “Satisfying each of them, without alienating the others, is the challenge facing Democratic leaders,” they wrote.
An aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic Majority Leader, said the Senate debate on health care could be pushed back at least a week as the chamber awaits a bill from the Finance Committee, the Wall Street Journal’s Patrick Yoest and Corey Boles wrote. Mr. Reid had aimed to begin debating a health care bill in the Senate next week.

A group of centrists Senators asked Mr. Reid and Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, to give the public 72 hours to peruse the pending Finance bill before it heads to the Senate floor, The Times’s David Herzenhorn wrote. Republicans on the committee also requested that top officials from the budget office and the Joint Committee on Taxation “be brought before the committee to answer any questions ahead of any changes or a final vote on the health care bill.”

Human Sacrifice Channel? A First Amendment case before the Supreme Court drew “exceptionally lively” responses from the bench Tuesday, as justices heard opening arguments in a case challenging a federal law banning “depictions of animal cruelty.” The idea for the channel came from Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., behind a string of hypothetical scenarios from the other judges that included “stuffing geese for pâté de foie gras,” The Times’s Adam Liptak wrote, “The justices did not seem inclined to expand categories of speech outside the protection of the First Amendment, notably obscenity and child pornography, to encompass violent images unrelated to sex.”

Czars and the Constitution In hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday, a panel of experts unanimously agreed that Mr. Obama’s use of so-called “czars” for everything from cars to climate did not violate the Constitution. They suggested that if Congress was uncomfortable with the President’s use and vetting of czars, then it could withdraw funding for their jobs or pass legislation requiring advisers to undergo Senate confirmation. The White House refused to defend itself in the hearings. Greg Craig, the White House counsel, wrote that none of the positions created by the president create “any valid concerns about accountability, transparency or congressional oversight,”according to The Hill’s Susan Crabtree.

Illegal Immigration The Obama administration plans to send a proposal to Congress this fall that would overhaul the nation’s system for detaining illegal immigrants. The plan, to be drafted by Janet Napolitano, the secretary for Homeland Security, will focus on illegal immigrants who pose serious risks, and advocate replacing detentions for nonviolent detainees with cheaper alternatives, The L.A. Times’ Anna Gorman wrote. “The moves would help overhaul a system that houses an average of 32,000 detainees every day across the country and has been criticized as having unsafe and inhumane conditions.”

The changes stem from a 35-page report released Tuesday written by a former Homeland Security adviser who once described a “cognitive dissonance” between the administration’s goals for immigration reform and its actual approach. “Though the administration has indicated that it wants to concentrate immigration enforcement on serious criminal offenders, the report shows that one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the population in detention is noncriminals picked up in the enforcement programs the government has embraced,” The Times’s Nina Bernstein wrote.

Help Wanted As unemployment continues it record-shattering climb toward 10 percent, Democrats are looking for ways to spur job creation quickly, especially with the 2010 mid-term elections looming. An idea to create tax incentives for businesses that create jobs, a strategy unemployed since the 1970s, is under consideration on the Hill and in the White House, and is gaining traction in the economic community, The Times’s Catherin Rampell wrote. The idea does have its detractors, who worry that some businesses might exploit the credit. They also argue that “the permanence of those jobs was less clear, and some dispute how many of those positions would have been created eventually anyway.” The jobless rate is expected to peak mid-summer 2010, as Senate candidates will be in the heat of contests for the 36 Senate seats up for grabs.

You put the reform bill online and not one American would be able to read or comprehend it. It is a useless waste of time – and a GOP delay tactic – to even consider putting hundreds of pages of intricate legislation online until every American has viewed it.

Yep, eight whole years, yet, the wingnuts clamoring for an immediate escalation, today, seem to have learned nothing from the rash moves taken by the previous administration and their own thoughtless knee-jerk support for the invasion of Iraq..
A move that played right into bin Laden’s hand.
What stupidity.
It’s so easy to jump on the bandwagon while chiming jingoistic, facile claims of patriotism.

The sad thing is that these militarists are missing a much larger threat to “our way of life” : the effects of global warming.

If you want a surefire way to seriously dent the recruiting power of al Qaeda, cut off our three billion dollar annual gift to Israel and insist that they get back to the 1967 border.

I do not understand Obama’s indecision on Afghanistan. The current ‘strategy’ being followed was implemented by Obama 6 months back when he appointed McChrystal and sent 21,000 troops over. Now, Obama is looking to overhaul his own strategy in 6 months. Was the first strategy ill-conceived? Has the situation on the ground changed drastically in 6 months that another review is needed? If so, what is the reason behind change in the situation? We need answers from the President, which are too few given his frequent speech making without substance.

I have to say I found latest meme from the right wing–echoed by SNL on Saturday night–that Obama, just over nine months in his first term, has accomplished nothing galling.

For one reason, because I think pulling the U.S. economy back from the brink of the Great Depression, Part Deux, hardly qualifies as nothing.

But more importantly, because–as this story highlights–eight years ago–at the same point in W’s administration–his–um–accomplishments included spending a month clearly brush at his faux ranch and ignoring his CIA Director’s personally delivered warning that the U.S. was facing an imminent terrorist attack (“All the lights are flashing red…”) reading a picture book during the attack and then launching a war in response that remains unwon and unfinished, eight years later.

Meanwhile, Gallup just released new poll numbers on the public’s approval numbers for Congress.

Obama and his left wing nuts may be able to blame the existence of the mess in Afghanistan on Bush, but now it is Obama’s watch. Obama does have the ability as Commander in Chief to pull the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Why won’t he? So he has to stop blaming Bush?

He finds the time & priority to go to copenhagen and argue for sports – not to say that it is not important but he cannot meet with the Dalai lama in washington, while at the same time he talks about Gandhi & American roots on October 2nd!.

James (San Diego) — I know this will come as a shock to you but when military men are schooled in the art of war, they read about that art in books.

I refer you to Major General James Mattis who had some success commanding marines in Iraq. He had his staff read huge folders of articles and books on the art of battling an insurgency. Funny how it worked for him.

Here’s another shocker: There’s a book entitled ‘The Art of War,’ by Sun Tzu. But I guess in your world no military leaders should read it.

Joe Six,
Even though Rove et al push that spin,
it’s still the most twisted logic going.
Like Krugman said, the opposition is behaving like sixteen-year-old brats.
That you take pleasure in Obama’s Afghan dilemma, with americans, europeans and afghans dying,it’s just mind-boggling.

I will try this again I guess the person running this forum did not like the comment about how small your brain was, however I will try this again.

The Iraq war is now considered a win. It would have been won years before but the liberals were supporting the enemy while we were in Iraq. Afghanistan will be won if obama remembers to talk to his general and find out what they need.
Iran would be won also, but like some many small minds in America they do not realize the military officers go to a school call a War College where they are taught offensive and defensive tactics of the past and possibilities of conflicts in the future.

This is what was meant by my statement you so blatantly could not understand and retorted with uninformed comment with the knowledge of how war are won or lost.

I do not blame you for your lack of education but your willingness to follow the leader of the Democratic Nationalist Committee mantra.

If McCain was serious at all, he would call 40,000 new troops a band aid. If we are looking for a good end to this war, we and our allies should commit 250,000 troops (heavy with special forces) accompanied with a very serious and costly Marshall Plan. Since the Afghans already equate us with the Soviets,
Only by a monumental force could we eventually find a proper end.
Of course someone in the opposition is gonna ask how we can pay for it.

In the 80’s, we nurtured bin Laden and the Taliban only to abandon the country right after the Soviet pull-out. It kinda gives an idea of our commitment.

Be careful what you advise, Tietjens. Reading military history seems to have a way of making some soldiers believe they are reincarnations of famous generals. Saddam Hussein, for instance, thought he had been Saladin in a prior life.

If one were to find that the Republicans had repeatedly saddled the Democrats with doomed military adventures in anticipation of losing presidential elections, it would be hard to avoid considering charging them with treason.

Steve Bolger,
In Kissinger’s auto-biography he actually admits advising Nixon to hold off negotiations with Vietnam until after the election. I wonder how many more died due to that decision.
Treason is a reasonable charge, in that case.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…